AP Interview: N. Korea's chemical disarmament should be separated from muclear issue

2008-04-04 15:26:55

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Efforts to disarm North Korea of chemical weapons should be separated from negotiations to end its nuclear program, the head of the chemical weapons watchdog agency said Friday.

Israel, Egypt and Syria also should separate the question of chemical weapons disarmament from the wider issues of Middle East peace, said Rogelio Pfirter, director general of the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW.

Failing to treat the issue separately has stalled the drive to rid arsenals of such weapons.

"These weapons will not make a strategic difference in the Middle East. These are just weapons of terror for civilians," Pfirter said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The four nations were among 12 countries that have failed to sign or ratify the 1997 treaty banning the kind of toxic weapons that have added an element of terror to warfare since the invention of the poison-tipped arrow.

So far, 183 nations have joined the treaty, known as the Chemical Weapons Convention, which established the OPCW to verify the destruction of stockpiles and production facilities. Participating nations were due to hold a weeklong review conference at the OPCW's headquarters in The Hague beginning Monday.

Pfirter said Iraq and Lebanon were close to joining the treaty, having completed the administrative and constitutional procedures. The OPCW was talking to Israel and Egypt about joining, but "we haven't had many contacts lately with Syria," he said.

Communications with North Korea were "nonexistent," Pfirter said. The only possible avenue to talk to Pyongyang is through the six-party talks--with the two Koreas, U.S., Russia, China and Japan--that focus on persuading the reclusive communist state to abandon its nuclear program.

"Common sense indicates that these issues should be addressed one by one," he said. "They are totally separate issues."

The convention outlawed the production, acquisition, development or transfer of chemical munitions, and set up a tough verification system for dismantling stockpiles within a decade.

Six countries have acknowledged having weapons capabilities and pledged to dismantle them. About one-third of the declared 71,000 metric tons (78,000 US tons) of chemical agents have been destroyed so far, the OPCW said. It takes only a pinhead-size amount of nerve agent to kill an adult within minutes.

The United States and Russia, each with thousands of tons of weapons, received five-year extensions for their disarmament programs and are on schedule to meet the new deadline of 2012, Pfirter said.

Last year, Albania became the first country to complete the destruction of its chemical weapons arsenal.

The latest country to declare its stockpile was Libya, which pledged in 2004 to destroy its weapons factories and stocks by 2011.